Users of electronic devices store data files at a variety of different places including hard drives on personal computers, transportable media such as CD's, DVDs, USB storage devices and portable hard drives, as well as on remote storage devices accessible using the Internet, often referred to as the “cloud”. Recently, users have started using the cloud more predominantly to backup all or most of their important data from their multiple electronic devices for safe keeping, disaster recovery, and/or anytime access via an Internet connection.
Data on electronic devices are customarily stored on computer readable mediums and organized in a file system. File systems typically use folder structures to organize all the data into hierarchical trees on the electronic device. For example, when programs are installed, they are installed in an identifiable folder for the particular program and may have nested sub folders for organizing other program data. Users may also organize their documents, photos, videos, and other personal data files in different folders.
With the expansion of cloud based services many users now have the ability to selectively choose folders of files to store in the cloud. These folders and/or files may be backed up on any user defined frequency, in real time or at a scheduled time, in order to ensure that the most up to date data is safely stored in the cloud. In order to track which files have been saved to the cloud, many remote storage providers retain the file path of each folder and/or file for each user device in order to accurately track a set of data that is being stored or backed up to the cloud.
When a deeply nested folder is selected for backing up to remote storage, the folder hierarchy may be retained as a file path to track each file so the same file is not transmitted during a subsequent backup operation. When these files are transmitted, only files in the user selected folder for backup are transmitted to the remote storage, not files in any parent or intermediate folders along the file path. When multiple computers are sending data to a single remote storage account, each computer's data may be tracked using a computer identifier/name as a root folder on the remote storage. Therefore, when a user is navigating his remote storage account, he may be presented with a root folder that has several empty nested folders in the file path before reaching the folder containing the files which were transmitted to the remote storage location. To navigate to the intended folder, the user may be required to make several clicks in order to click through every nested folder, starting at the root folder which may be the computer name. Many of the intermediate folders may be empty before arriving to the desired files that were transmitted to the remote storage.
Similarly, with respect to a local file system, when as the user moves files around or a program is installed and then uninstalled from a device's storage, there may be instances where nested sub folders are left empty containing no files or only hidden system files. Therefore, in such instances, a user may be required to click through many empty nested intermediate folders before arriving to the desired files.
For these reasons, there exists a need for a solution that allows a user to navigate to folders containing data items with fewer clicks while still being able to ascertain the exact location of such data in the folder hierarchy.